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Mastering Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO): A Marketer's Guide to Google's AI Search

Mastering Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO): A Marketer's Guide to Google's AI Search

Mastering Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO): A Marketer's Guide to Google's AI Search

By Rishan Chopra

As Google continues rolling out its AI Overviews and generative search experiences, SEO has evolved into a new discipline: Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). This guide outlines six critical steps marketers must take to adapt, optimise, and thrive in the AEO era.

1. Prioritise Unique, Valuable Content

AI searches often stem from detailed, conversational user queries. Users no longer want generic answers — they want direct, insightful, problem-solving content.

Why Generic Content Fails in AEO:

  • Lacks specificity for AI to match with nuanced queries.
  • Often duplicates information already in Google's training data.
  • Provides little incentive for click-through or engagement.

2. Optimise Your Page Experience

A great user experience is non-negotiable. If users bounce due to poor navigation, AI engines learn that your content lacks quality.

Must-Haves:

  • Mobile-first, responsive design
  • Clear H1-H3 hierarchy
  • Logical internal linking
  • Fast loading speed (aim for <2.5s)

Pro Tip: Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights (here) to audit and enhance UX performance.

3. Ensure Technical Accessibility

Google’s crawlers — and AI systems — need seamless access to your content.

Check the Following:

  • Pages are indexable (robots.txt, llms.txt meta tags)
  • Avoid orphan pages
  • Fix broken internal links
  • Ensure schema markup is clean and valid

Tool Suggestion: Use Screaming Frog or Sitebulb for technical audits.

4. Strategically Use Preview Controls

Control how Google surfaces your content in snippets and AI summaries using meta directives.

Tools to Use:

  • max-snippet — limit character count in summaries
  • nosnippet — exclude content from snippets
  • data-nosnippet — block specific page sections

Use these selectively to keep valuable sections visible while protecting proprietary content.

5. Embrace Multimodal Content

AI search favours pages rich in text, visuals, audio, and video. Multimodal inputs feed better summarisation and context matching.

What to Add:

  • Explainer videos
  • Process flow diagrams
  • Annotated screenshots
  • Infographics

Stat: Google notes that rich media pages are 53% more likely to appear in AI-generated snippets.

6. Shift Your Metrics from Clicks to Engagement

AEO prioritises engagement signals like time-on-page, scroll depth, and interaction over raw traffic.

New Metrics to Track:

  • Avg. session duration
  • Pages per session
  • Scroll % completion
  • Engagement events (e.g. form submissions, video plays)

Insight: Visitors from AI search may be fewer — but far more qualified.

FAQs on Answer Engine Optimisation

Q: What is AEO in SEO? AEO, or Answer Engine Optimisation, refers to adapting SEO strategies for AI-generated search results that summarise and contextualise answers, reducing reliance on traditional SERP rankings.

Q: How does AI search differ from traditional SEO? AI search uses natural language processing to summarise and answer queries directly, often before the click. Success relies on content quality, structure, and engagement over just rankings.

Final Thought: Stop Chasing Clicks — Start Earning Engagement

For two decades, SEO meant:

  1. Rank higher
  2. Drive more clicks
  3. Get more traffic

With AI search, the new playbook is:

  1. Provide real answers
  2. Earn deeper engagement
  3. Build lasting trust

Brands that adopt AEO principles today will own the high-intent searches of tomorrow.

Need help implementing AEO at scale? Let’s talk at rishan@adgent.ai